Marijuana users across several states with a legal recreational industry share broad concerns about product potency and marijuana tax spending, according to a new qualitative study from the drug policy think tank, the Parabola Center. Researchers said users also reported feeling a sense of increased safety through access to regulated cannabis as it has become more normalized.
Shaleen Title, a former Cannabis Control Commission member, is founding director of the Parabola Center. She joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share insights from the report. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: So this study is based on a few dozen interviews with marijuana users across nine states where recreational marijuana has been legal for at least five years. Before we get to the takeaways, I want to set the table a bit. It’s not a large sample size — again, it’s a qualitative study, but the goal was to understand the views of people who use legal marijuana. What did you find out and why was this important?
Shaleen Title: Well, we thought it was important because we noticed that there’s been very little qualitative research about cannabis consumers, and that’s where you ask open-ended questions about their perceptions, their experience with legalization. And especially with a campaign, a ballot question coming up to repeal legalization, we thought it was a good opportunity to not just have polls or “yes” or “no” questions, but to really sit down and find out the nuances for the people who are affected by cannabis legalization, specifically the people who are buying and using cannabis.
So we sat down with them and we had at least 45-minute interviews with each person so that we could really dig into the themes that came up. And just to touch on the methodology a bit, our authors of this study — Dr. Faith English and Meredith McGee — they independently coded the themes that came up in each interview and then compared them, and they kept going until the same themes were coming up in each interview and no new themes were coming up. And so that’s called saturation. That’s how we knew when we were done. And for us, that was about 39 interviews.
Rath: Wow, interesting. So having two people like that, does that help with observer bias somehow?
Title: Exactly. Yeah. So then we compare the coding to make sure that they’re similar. And in this case, they were about 93% similar. So it was clear that the coding was correct.
Rath: The study is titled “I Like Not Having to Go Behind a Dumpster at a Taco Bell: Consumer Perspectives in States with Established Cannabis Markets.” You know, it’s a funny name, but that is one of the sentiments that participants identified as a positive aspect. Right? And it’s just kind of interesting you’re talking to cannabis users after, you know, just 10 years into all of this now.
Title: Absolutely. Yeah. That was something that came up over and over. They felt like they were safe and secure in the cannabis that they’re using, that it’s been rigorously tested, that they know that what they’re buying should be free of contaminants like mold and pesticides. And they also noted an overall decrease in stigma as well as a widespread normalization of use. And comparisons to alcohol came up a lot. And this was something that they generally saw as a positive.
Rath: And, you know, losing the stigma, taking it off the street and out from behind the dumpster seems unequivocally positive. What are some of the negative impacts that some of the subjects talked about?
Title: Well, an interesting thing for us was that even though tax revenue was brought up as a positive, participants also brought up that they weren’t sure where the tax revenue is going. And a lot of times as they started to talk about the tax revenue, they’d recall that they heard a lot about it when legalization was first about to pass or when it first passed. But now they realize, I haven’t seen where that tax revenue is going in my community. And so a lot of people brought up that they were confused about the tax revenue. They wanted some more transparency for their policymakers. And then public health concerns were also voiced by a lot of people. There were concerns about the high potency of cannabis and also whether that might be harmful for young people and if there’s a potential for increased use among youth as well.
Rath: Talk a bit more about that potency issue, because that’s something that’s come up in the repeal argument that what is out there now is just way too potent and it’s causing problems.
Title: Yeah, we thought this was a really interesting thing to look into because sometimes we see concerns about potency and public health posed as though only people who oppose legalization can share those concerns. But in fact, every participant from Massachusetts continues to support legalization, but they also did raise these concerns that cannabis potency might be high [and] that might be causing problems. And so, we wanted to really dig in and see that consumers can hold nuanced opinions, and you can be a consumer, or you can be someone who supports legalization and opposes repeal, but you might hold these concerns as well. And so that might be important for policymakers to know as they consider regulation down the line.
Rath: I’m very curious for your thoughts, especially as you were someone who was involved in the legislation legislation initially, having worked on that and now having done this study, what are your sort of takeaways for how we are now with legal cannabis, specifically in Massachusetts, and where we maybe should go going forward?
Title: Well, that’s why I think this type of research is so important because I know when I was the commissioner, We heard a lot from lobbyists, from business owners, and we typically heard from consumers when they had a really dramatic story, you know, whether it was positive or negative. But we didn’t hear that often from the everyday consumers. And so for me, it’s important to have that information because if, for example, consumers are feeling like potency of the products they’re seeing is too high, that’s something that should be addressed by regulation. I do want to flag though that a theme that came up also was an appreciation of the high quality and the variety of products and the availability. Of course, that varies by rural, urban, and suburban settings, but in general, the availability of the products was seen as a positive. So, if you take both of those things into account, I think we do want to look at whether potency is something that should be restricted and perhaps, you know, the scientific evidence for that, but definitely alongside what consumers say as well.
Rath: Any other revelations or surprises in this study that we haven’t talked about?
Title: One thing we were really surprised by was that many brought up increased access to medical products, which kind of goes against what you see on paper when you look at data about the number of patient registrations and what patients are buying. But consumers told us that they feel medical cannabis is beneficial, It’s readily available or even more available. And it became clear to us that whether something is labeled as “medical cannabis” is different from whether the consumer perceives it as recreational or medical use. So, they might be calling it medical use, but actually buying adult-use cannabis and we thought that was really interesting and surprising. Rath: Interesting. And finally, I have to ask you, having done this study now, and not just based on the study, on your involvement now going back over 10 years, what is your feeling about the repeal ballot question that’s coming up before voters?
Title: Well, I strongly oppose the repeal question. And I think it’s somewhat silly that out-of-state interests have entirely funded this repeal initiative. But also, it does offer us an opportunity to really engage on these questions. You know, 10 years in, it probably is a good time for us to stop and take stock of how consumers and the public generally are experiencing legalization. So, I do appreciate that we have that opportunity.
Rath: Are there ways in which you think that existing marijuana laws and legislation in Massachusetts should be changed or modified?
Title: Well, I really appreciate that we’ve done a lot for small businesses and we’ve prevented corporate consolidation and monopolies to a big extent. I think that’s something that we have to continue to be very careful about because the efforts to find loopholes continue to increase. But in my daily conversations, when I talk to people who supported legalization, they still do. And I often talk to people who say that they voted “no,” but they’ve been surprised that they haven’t seen the negative effects that they’ve expected. So overall, I think it’s gone very well.
Rath: You mentioned a lot of the out-of-state money that was, that was coming into this ballot question. We spoke with Kevin Sabbat of the Virginia-based group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and I wanted to get your response to one of the points that he raised in terms of the social equity aspect, which he really played down as being misleading.
Title: Well, if I was trying to pass a law that repealed legalization, I would certainly downplay those as well, because what we found in our study is that in Massachusetts, equity support is near universal. I think people who don’t even necessarily support legalization or don’t consider themselves pro-cannabis they back the equity commitment of the law and they understand that marijuana prohibition harmed certain communities more than others. And it’s only fair that we should try to repair some of those harms. So, I think that’s been a success, I think we can continue to try to do better. But sure, if you oppose legalization, of course you’re going to downplay that.
Rath: It’s interesting in your open-ended questions, this was something that the consumers brought up. They were interested in where their, where their tax dollars were going.
Title: That came up again and again, and it was so interesting to us that they brought up not understanding where the tax revenue was going. And they gave some good examples, like some people said you should have a sign – like you have on the highway that shows who sponsored that area of the highway – you should have signs that show when marijuana tax revenue is covering something. We thought that was a great idea.
